Depravity

Chapter 1

KNOX

Silence is supposed to follow the dead, or so some would think.

They’d be wrong. My basement is proof of that.

I hear death in the smack of my feet against cement, a sound that reminds me to wipe the floors before the chemicals set in.

In the rattle of the vents, breathing out lime and decay.

In the whine of the rusty fan in the corner.

Then there’s the hide swaying from one of my hooks. Speckled with bits of flesh, it drips blood at an uneven pace into the tin bucket beneath it.

But the echoes of what’s left of them don’t bother me.

It’s a familiar chorus.

It’s home.

With these sounds in the background, I strip off my gloves, satisfied with the final touches on another hide I have stretched across my wooden frame. I’ve just finished oiling it, weeks after Jett, my older brother, brought it over.

This is what we do in Colbert, our small, rotting town.

Kill people. Turn their skin into leather. Sell it across the US under the neat disguise of livestock leather.

But people don’t just wander through here. We’re based in the middle of nowhere. No gas station, no convenience store, nothing.

That’s why we invented our tourist trap. The innocent-looking leather museum we built on Main Street. Each storefront is dressed up like a piece of our history, and you can’t enter unless you’ve booked a tour online.

The order is important because one in ten groups that venture out here never leaves. Spacing out the murders helps keep us Colberts under the radar.

If a family member or an investigator comes sniffing anyway, we feed them the same lies we always do. Sir, we haven’t seen them since they finished the tour. Go ahead, ma’am, search all you want. You won’t find them here.

That, like the rest of my life, will be nothing but a distant memory in three weeks.

No more tricking, murdering, or tanning people for me.

I’m getting out of Colbert.

A tinge of guilt stings me because when I’m gone, my family will have to take over the tanning side of the business.

Jett, Grandpa, and my parents are in charge only of luring both men and women to Colbert, then hunting, killing, and selling them.

But—no. I can’t feel sorry for them. They won’t be completely helpless.

Jett is more than capable of stepping into my role, in addition to his current responsibilities. He’s twenty-seven, two years older than me, and the second-strongest of the Colberts.

It’s actually why I haven’t killed the bastard yet.

He’ll look after the people I care about when I’m gone.

For the time being.

Maybe in a few years, they’ll let Reese handle the tanning once she’s older. She’s got what it takes for this job. I can see it in her.

Even at ten years old, my sister is as brutal as they come, her green eyes lighting up whenever new tourists come here.

Her living-dolls, as she calls them.

One day, she’ll call them living-hides like the rest of us do.

“Damn Texas heat.” While I’ve been reflecting, a drop of sweat has trickled down my forehead, and now it’s about to land in my eye.

The weather is better this time of year, sure, but I’ve been grinding for the past few hours.

I wipe my forehead, then move on to another task, heading over to the buckets waiting under the hooks for inspection.

Squatting down, I see what I always do.

More blood. More flesh runoff. More stench.

Same. Same. Same.

After twenty-five years of living here, I’m fucking bored. That’s why I’m leaving this place.

The bleachy tang, the bark rot, the killing—I don’t hate any of it, but…

“There has to be more to life than this,” I grumble.

There will be.

Three weeks, I remind myself.

Then, I’ll have the sleeping pills I’ve ordered to sedate my family. Just enough to knock them out. Enough that they won’t hear the rumble of our old truck when I drive away.

The last time I tried to get out of here, even though it was late, Jett woke up and grabbed his motorcycle.

With Papa pressed against him from behind, they drove me off the road.

Because they knew I didn’t have it in me to kill them, the beating that followed had me spitting blood and wheezing for air.

That was last year. I’ve wised up since. Over the past twelve months, I’ve pocketed some money that’s technically mine. Then, during my last grocery trip to the nearby town, I slipped a few bills to the clerk, our contact for all things fucked up.

He, in exchange, promised to get me what I need and keep my secret.

Three weeks.

Once I’m out of here, I’ll finally soak up the real world.

I’ll find myself a wife of my choosing. Kids she’ll want, not forced to have.

Ma’s been pushing marriage on me for years, saying it’s my duty to breed a woman.

That Papa would fetch one from a nearby town for me, and I’d make her mine, like it or not.

Every time she tries to shove it down my throat, I give her the same answer.

No.

The first woman I’m with will be mine. All mine.

A static noise pulls me from my thoughts.

“Hey, Hide-boy. I came over to the farmhouse to give Papa the good news,” my brother hollers at me from the walkie-talkie I have on my worktable. He’s too fucking happy. As always. “I got the tenth tour order online.”

It’s been a busy summer for sure. Nine tour groups have already passed through, and I’m still not done with the last batch.

Meaning…yeah, so much for spacing out our visitors’ murders. What can you do. Sometimes it goes that way. We haven’t been caught yet, though, and I don’t see it happening. Ever.

“Three people this time, comin’ in hot next week. You ready?” he asks.

As if there’s anything else to do out here. I ignore him, glancing up at the hanging hide and assessing how much longer I’ll have to leave it there.

“Better make some room in that basement.” He ends the sentence with his signature high-pitched laugh. It reminds me a lot of how Papa used to laugh when I was a kid.

Both of them look alike too. Black hair, blue eyes. My eyes are green and brown. My short hair’s light brown, just a shade darker than Ma’s blonde.

“Hide-boy,” Jett keeps nagging, being his usual impatient self. “Or are you Mask-O today?”

Fuck him and fuck his insults. They don’t touch me. I’m not ashamed of the mask I wear so often.

It’s my trophy. One I found in a bag that used to belong to a person who came to Colbert and didn’t leave, along with a small green charm attached to their key ring.

The mask itself is made of latex, with straps that tie around the back of the head. By now, after years of use, it’s old. The surface is dull, yellowed, and a little creased, but I don’t care.

These two items, for some unknown reason, called to me.

They’re perfect.

Mine.

“Helloooo?”

I rise and cross the floor to the worktable where the walkie sits. Unfortunately, I have to talk to him, or he’ll come banging on my door. Lord knows I hate visitors.

On my way there, unease stirs beneath my ribs. A wrongness I can’t put into words.

This isn’t Jett or the incessant itch to get out of this place, I’m sure of that.

Maybe it’s the thought of the last people I’ll ever tan that makes something unfamiliar coil in my stomach.

No, not that either. There’s more to it than just finality.

By the time my hand closes on the walkie, the feeling has sharpened into a sense of curiosity. Like my body’s telling me it wants to see who these people are. That they matter, for a reason I can’t wrap my head around.

I’ll have to break into Jett’s laptop after we’re done talking. See what this is. See why my chest feels so raw at the idea of them.

“I’ll be ready,” I say. Then I feed him a lie to get him out of Colbert so I can do my research uninterrupted. “But since I’m running low on oil for this last hide, you’re going to have to swing by town. Bring me twenty bottles, minimum. Not the cheap shit.”

“Will do, later.”

“Jett, I’m busy. What I’m doing, it can’t wait. Later won’t work for me. Now.”

“Fine, fine, I’ll get going.”

“Son.” I hear Papa, who must’ve grabbed the walkie from Jett. “Knox.”

I used to grimace at the sound of his commanding voice when I was a kid. I haven’t for years.

“Still here.”

“Ma asks if you’ll be joining us for dinner?”

Not if it were up to me. They eat greasy foods and pies that make my skin crawl.

Thing is, if I say no enough times, they’ll suspect me. Might start looking closer at what I’m doing. Might not take the pills I’ll smash into their iced tea when the time comes.

Might force my hand to hurt them so I can get out of here alive.

I don’t want to have to kill them unless I really have to.

“I’ll be there.”

“Great.” At that, the static dies out.

After I hear our truck grumbling outside, I put on my mask because I feel like it and go over to Jett’s.

I’m there in two minutes flat since no fences separate our three houses. No fancy lawns or driveways either. What’s left of Colbert, the town named after my family, is purely functional.

My lips curl in disgust as soon as I walk through the door.

While my home is always clean, Jett’s place is a pigsty. Empty beer bottles are scattered across his coffee table. A mustard stain is a permanent feature on his used-to-be tan carpet. The stink of meat is here to stay.

Not my problem. I have my own shit to take care of, like heading over to the room where he has his laptop. Same room where, a few years ago, I watched him type on it late at night. From my place in the shadows, I learned a little about how to work this thing. How to go on the internet.

Sorcery is what I thought it was. And an opportunity.

Between stalking him and teaching myself how to use it while he was away, I now know where to click when I need anything.

I can do my own research on the outside world. On what’s waiting for me out there. About what breeding a woman actually means, since I won’t ask anyone here about it.

Today, I need to learn about these visitors Jett mentioned.

A little digging around his laptop, and I find it. The visitor’s email to Colbert’s Leather Museum.

The sender is Skylar Evans. Our next guest. Coming down here all the way from New York City.

For no apparent reason, her name alone is enough to get my dick hard.

Now I really have to see her.

Good thing these people have what’s called social media. Photos, everywhere. More than I ever imagined.

Their pictures stay there even after we make them disappear.

But the dead don’t interest me.

She does.

Because…

Fuck me.

Fuck.

Me.

That face.

Round green eyes stare at me from the screen.

Her thick blonde hair is piled up on top of her head. A strand of hair has escaped from that mess that looks like the most beautiful bird’s nest I’ve ever seen, hanging just next to her eye.

My teeth grind. My breath is hot in my mask. Precum dampens my boxers.

My body leans forward on its own.

Skylar isn’t smiling. I think—deep breath, or I’ll come in my jeans—that’s what attracts me the most. Her lips aren’t curved down either. They’re flat.

An enigma.

I’m willing to bet she smells of oranges. Nothing too sweet, so not apples. Nothing too sweet, either.

Oranges.

I wipe my thumb over my jeans, cleaning it before I stroke her face on the screen.

So good. So fucking good to touch her, even like this. Her cheeks must be soft. That little nose, it’s perfect.

Those lips. I’d force them open to take my ropes as a gag, then my dick. I’ve never done it before, never even kissed a girl. But with her, the thoughts come like instinct, raw and demanding.

As if my body’s known all along what it was waiting for.

The things I’d do to her…

For her…

My cock in her pussy. Her stomach swollen with my kids.

Not because she’s some woman to be bred.

Because she’s my woman.

It won’t be easy. Taking her before I get the sleeping pills means I might have to kill my family to get us both out of here.

Sweet and lethal little Reese could stay ten years old forever.

I don’t want that.

Meaning I’ll have to figure it out.

I will figure it out.

Whether she likes it or not, Skylar Evans will be mine.